JERRY #3

Sara Femenella

Good Things Will Strive to Dwell

i.

On another part of the island

Under the almond tree
a finger expands the molecules in the air
and everything smells of almonds.

His flush, her moment

glow arboreal realm

burst a moment explosive to interrupt
their every moment from then on

full-blown cross-bowed
bitter rusty cutting deeper

down to the ancestral
to what they were waiting for
the thing divine

for nothing natural ever seen
so noble they were by its beauty
stunned as though poisoned.

ii.

She and he

Stranded in the swept-away flourish of a This,
as in: this is where we live together / this is the bedroom the kitchen
the door / this season is winter / this is love / this acrobatic laughing / this acerbic flame
this mess / this misunderstanding / is this it?
this flash / this confused noise / this graceful and cruel / this amazing nothing.

They are its ever-captive actors bearing the marks of drowning.

What do you want for dinner?
I don’t know, what do you want for dinner?

iii.

On another part of the island

They reap from what remains.

A callow wound blooming in the veins

their blackbirds cull a syntax of vows and promises
tomorrow a heavy pulse where the hope roots

marrowed in the joy
a winnowed haunt.

Hear them acquiesce:

from their most harrowed
dawns their
yes, raven, yes.

iv.

The winter is far from over

Doctors, groceries, a game of chess. They could disappear
nothing but flummox
shudder the intimacy of the There.

Do you hear that, he asks her.
What?
That.
What is it?
It’s the storm. That’s what a storm sounds like.

There anchor, there lack,
there thine moloch in a red dress
apropos of you-know-what—
it is as such, palm to palm,
latitude and longitude rounded with a sleep.

There: I’m patient.
There: I’m not angry anymore.

The pledges to each other that they will stay.

v.

Finally

It surfaces between them: the There,
come at last. They knew it would.
They’re goose-bumped, thread-bare.
Standing back-lit by the astral
glow of the open fridge he’s like,
what was I about to say.
He’s motionless.

And after? Sway or nothing.

vi.

Prospero’s Disclosure

Pardon the deception
the random antics
of childish household spirits.

Pardon the burnt rice and bad grammar
flash-backs kitchen knife against soft spot
philosophy against virology.

See them ease into the myth
devolve to an animal gape. Beyond Darwin
beyond Galileo lies an extraordinary
blueprint of lovers
a palimpsest of lovers
their love lit up by those who had loved before:

she isn’t unordinary. He isn’t unlike his father.

And yes, I’ve garnered from what I’ve wrecked it’s true.

I’m imminent, lest to light, that son-given
was almost son-made. I had promised
more than that.

To hear of my wrongdoings, o bearer of the fable.

Mother Eating Child

You stalk your disappearances,
thumbing windy streets in an imaginary
red wool coat. You’ve grown

small enough to fit onto the pages
of your atlas, singing woman in three languages,
singing a foray into a tomb the size of a mouth.

Harbor suffering inside a throat,
affliction a minuscule, luminous planet,

moth-lit and feminine.

It takes many forms: a ship
or a sandstorm, a mamba or a scimitar,
its advance a bright fang glowing like a choir.

Surrender. Your misfortune
digressed by a verb of motion,
stumbling on a fantastically human

interweaving of animal
parts and foliage, moonlit bad habits
strewn at your feet—

a few bucks, a couple words
in a dark doorway.

Pueri in maternis uteris existents nondum
prodierunt in lucem vitam,

or so they say.
Love has no other end.

Galileo Effect

Having dethroned yourself
from the center of your universe
what else is there to take your place?

You know this fear, your days
unfolding beneath a white flag.
Explain yourself. With all your clever answers
multiplying like fractals you descend
a staircase, you graduate a mode
vectoring Spring, vis-a-vis kindling, shine
any sundered medium for the propagation of light.

So, raise a glass to the rings of the gold planet,
your aether binary, totem sky.